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Friday, 9 October 2015

The 'most moral army in the world' backs up settlers setting fire to Palestinian olive groves

Yet more disturbing
videos of the Israeli army backing up stone-throwing settlers who set fire to Palestinian
olive groves. I suspect that the
settlers won’t receive the minimum 4 year sentences that now apply to Palestinians!

Israeli human rights
group B’Tselem today released
six damning videos of heavily-armed Israeli soldiers escorting Israeli
settlers as they hurl stones at Palestinians and set fire to their olive
groves.

In
the above video, Israeli soldiers are embedded within a group of masked
settlers from the Yitzhar
settlement in the northern occupied West Bank. The footage shows soldiers —
crouching among settlers who are slinging stones — while they fire tear
gas canisters in the same direction.

In
another video, soldiers stand idly by as they watch settlers set fire to
Palestinian fields belonging to the village of Urif:

The
video below shows a settler helping a soldier load tear gas canisters into
his launcher while other settlers throw stones with slingshots.

“Settler rampage”

The
videos were filmed on 3 and 4 October by B’Tselem volunteers. In a press
release accompanying the videos, B’Tselem calls the footage “the
most blatant example of the tacit support of the settler rampage by forces on
the ground.”

The
group also points out that the military is “shirking” its obligation to
provide protection to Palestinians as stated under international
law.

“The
soldier not only refrains from stopping the settlers, but on the contrary, is
helped by a masked settler who carries his military backpack containing
tear-gas canisters, and even loads the canisters onto the soldier’s six-shot
launcher,” B’Tselem states.

The
Israeli government has declared
a “war” on stone throwers — but only when the stone throwers are
Palestinian.

Settlers
in Yitzhar, which is located on a hilltop, regularly harass Palestinians in the
villages of Burin
and Urif below.

Impunity

Meanwhile,
Israeli settlers and soldiers enjoy impunity as the numbers of injured and dead
Palestinians rise.

Ma’an
News Agency reports
that on Thursday, Israeli forces shot and killed 20-year-old Wissam Faraj
in Shuafat
refugee camp in East Jerusalem during an invasion. Since
Saturday, Israeli military forces have injured 800 Palestinians, 60
of whom were shot with live fire.

Ghassan
Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official who monitors settlement
activity in the West Bank, says there have been more
than 130 settler attacks on Palestinians in the last week.

Israeli
legal rights group Yesh
Din says it has received dozens of complaints from
Palestinians who are reporting their vehicles and homes being stoned at junctions, attempts
at arson and home break-ins and the torching of their farmland.